IIt’s 5 am. I’ve been up all night. We’re supposed to be. The doors and windows are open. Seeya’s body is in the living room. The candles are burning down.

My grandfather was born November 19th, 1924, in Panadura. That side of the family had gradually proceeded up the coast, from Matara generations ago. Achchi and Seeya eventually settled in Mount Lavinia. When I was young we lived there. Many people lived there, when they needed to. I grew up around a lot of Akkas and Ayyas who I later discovered weren’t really relatives at all. But they were. That’s what I remember most about my grandfather. He was a good man.

Traffic accidents in Sri Lanka are on the rise. I and Mahina Bongso are speaking just spoke with Rohan Abeywickrema on Good Morning Sri Lanka on MTV Sports. He’s from the Chartered Institute of Transport and Logistics. Here are some the issues he’ll highlight:

End of an era, man. You may recognize Ebert Silva from the back of buses all over the country. I think his was the one with the Thundercats lion logo. The buses are so ubiquitous that I even used Ebert Silva’s name as a character in a (very) short story. Apparently he also did a lot of tourism work, including the Colombo City Tours. It’s quite sad to hear that he’s passed away.

Christo Raymond was a dark/light, young/old and deeply conflicted man. He died yesterday, which came as a great surprise. For everyone who’s known him, he is and always was deeply, truly alive. At one point I thought he might become my father-in-law so I made some tentative effort to know the man. I never found a single clue. He was alive. Now he is dead. That is all I can say with any certainty.

Janaka Basnayake tried to pull a Houdini and, sadly, died. He was trying to set a record for the longest time buried alive and did it with the help of family and friends. When he emerged after 6 and a half hours he was unconscious and later passed away. It seems that there isn’t really a recorded record for this act anyways, as perhaps there shouldn’t be.

I knew the name when I heard that she’d died. The last I’d heard of Marie Colvin she was trying to broker a deal for the LTTE leadership. It is terribly sad that she died and I’m sorry for her family’s loss.

The LTTE Great Heroes Day is coming up, and the JVP’s November Heroes Day just passed. Both groups terrorized, tortured and tried to kill their way to political change, and yet both feel that there is something to commemorate. While I support mourning the dead, I think it’s folly to say that they died for something more than sociopathic assholes promoting a corrupted cause.

As a follow up to a report on declining suicides in general, this is how Sri Lankans kill themselves. Sadly, pesticide and insecticide dominate. Why do they kill themselves? Basically, their family or spouse drive them to it. As the report says “Harrasment by the husband & family disputes” is the number one (reported reason) for suicides in Sri Lanka.

It’s an oft cited statistic that Sri Lanka has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. It’s not true, anymore. Suicides have decline dramatically from a peak in 1995 (47 per 100,000 people) to about 19 in 2009. The country that pioneered suicide bombing is no longer leading the world in any kind of suicide, which is a very good thing.